TechSpot ran two Dell XPS 13 ultraportables, one powered by a Broadwell era i5-5200U and one with a Coffee Lake i7-8550U, through a battery of benchmarks and tasks to see what effect the patches have had on performance. They were lucky not to encounter the stability issues currently plaguing machines with patched UEFI but they do mention it. For intensive tasks, such as rendering or numerical calculations there was a noticeable hit to performance after the patches were installed, with both systems suffering equally. This is interesting to see as there has been mention that older processors may suffer more than current generation CPUs. Take a look at this newest set of benchmarks and expect to see more soon.

"We've already covered what you can expect on modern desktop systems, however today we'll be diving into the mobile side of things to see how Meltdown and Spectre patches affect ultraportable laptops."

Spectre and Meltdown are about as bad as vulnerabilities can get, offering significant security issues on a wide variety of processors with only a band aid solution currently available. It seems Intel is asking many clients to rip that band aid off as the supposed cure is now causing more widespread harm than the vulnerabilities it is to protect against. This is not a case of performance decreases due to the patch but instead, as Intel executive vice president Neil Shenoy puts it, the patch "may introduce higher than expected reboots and other unpredictable system behaviour." This means that not only new machines powered by Broadwell or Haswell are unprotected but also that many of your service providers will also not be installing these patches.

There is no good news out of this today, the difficulty a widespread attack is high but a targeted attack; not so much.

"We recommend that OEMs, cloud service providers, system manufacturers, software vendors and end users stop deployment of current versions, as they may introduce higher than expected reboots and other unpredictable system behavior."

These processors scale from four cores up to twenty-four of them, with HyperThreading. They are also available in cache sizes from 20MB up to 60MB. With Intel's Xeon naming scheme, the leading number immediately after the E7 in the product name denotes the number of CPUs that can be installed in a multi-socket system. The E7-8XXX line can be run in an eight-socket motherboard, while the E7-4XXX models are limited to four sockets per system. TDPs range between 115W and 165W, which is pretty high, but to be expected for a giant chip that runs at a fairly high frequency.

Intel Xeon E7 v4 launched on June 6th with listed prices between $1223 to $7174 per CPU.

You have seen our take on the impressively powerful and extremely expensive i7-6950X but of course we were not the only ones to test out Intel's new top of the line processor. Hardware Canucks focused on the difference between the ~$1700 i7-6950X and the ~$1100 i7-6900K. From synthetic benchmarks such as AIDA through gaming at 720p and 1080p, they tested the two processors against each other to see when it would make sense to spend the extra money on the new Broadwell-E chip. Check out what they thought of the chip overall as well as the scenarios where they felt it would be full utilized.

"10 cores, 20 threads, over $1700; Intel's Broadwell-E i7-6950X delivers obscene performance at an eye-watering price. Then there's the i7-6900K which boasts all the same niceties in a more affordable package."

Bristol Ridge Takes on Mobile: E2 Through FX

It is no secret that AMD has faced an uphill battle since the release of the original Core 2 processors from Intel. While stayed mostly competitive through the Phenom II years, they hit some major performance issues when moving to the Bulldozer architecture. While on paper the idea of Chip Multi-Threading sounded fantastic, AMD was never able to get the per thread performance up to expectations. While their CPUs performed well in heavily multi-threaded applications, they just were never seen in as positive of a light as the competing Intel products.

The other part of the performance equation that has hammered AMD is the lack of a new process node that would allow it to more adequately compete with Intel. When AMD was at 32 nm PD-SOI, Intel had introduced its 22nm TriGate/FinFET. AMD then transitioned to a 28nm HKMG planar process that was more size optimized than 32nm, but did not drastically improve upon power and transistor switching performance.

So AMD had a double whammy on their hands with an underperforming architecture and limitted to no access to advanced process nodes that would actually improve their power and speed situation. They could not force their foundry partners to spend billions on a crash course in FinFET technology to bring that to market faster, so they had to iterate and innovate on their designs.

Bristol Ridge is the fruit of that particular labor. It is also the end point to the architecture that was introduced with Bulldozer way back in 2011.

Broadwell-E Platform

It has been nearly two years since the release of the Haswell-E platform, which began with the launch of the Core i7-5960X processor. Back then, the introduction of an 8-core consumer processor was the primary selling point; along with the new X99 chipset and DDR4 memory support. At the time, I heralded the processor as “easily the fastest consumer processor we have ever had in our hands” and “nearly impossible to beat.” So what has changed over the course of 24 months?

Today Intel is launching Broadwell-E, the follow up to Haswell-E, and things look very much the same as they did before. There are definitely a couple of changes worth noting and discussing, including the move to a 10-core processor option as well as Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0, which is significantly more interesting than its marketing name implies. Intel is sticking with the X99 platform (good for users that might want to upgrade), though the cost of these new processors is more than slightly disappointing based on trends elsewhere in the market.

This review of the new Core i7-6950X 10-core Broadwell-E processor is going to be quick, and to the point: what changes, what is the performance, how does it overclock, and what will it cost you?

Zotac has a new enthusiast ZBOX in the E series, the E1751; a small form-factor PC with an Intel Core i7 (Broadwell) processor and Iris Pro graphics.

The Intel Core i7-5775R processor is a 65 W 4 core/8 thread part that operates from 3.3 - 3.8 GHz. There are two DDR3L SoDIMM slots supporting 1600/1866 MHz memory (the CPU supports up to 32 GB of RAM), and storage options are limited to SATA/mSATA drives (no M.2 support for the latest NVMe storage).

Specifications:

Processor: Intel Core i7-5775R, quad-core up to 3.8 GHz

Graphics: Intel Iris Pro Graphics 6200

Memory: 2x DDR3L 1600/1866 SoDIMM slots

Storage: 2.5-inch SATA 6.0 Gbps HDD/SSD bay, mSATA 6.0 Gbps slot

Networking: Dual Gigabit LAN, 802.11ac wireless, Bluetooth 4.0

Display output: 2x DisplayPort, DVI-D (single-link)

USB: 3x USB 3.0 ports (1x front, 2x rear)

Audio: 3.5 mm input/output; digital optical audio output

Card reader: SD/SDHC/SDXC

In addition to the kit specified above, the “PLUS” models will include 8 GB of memory and a 128 GB SSD.

As reported by CPU World Intel has added a total of eight new processors to the 5th-gen “Broadwell” and 6th-gen “Skylake” CPU lineups, with new mobile and desktop models appearing in Intel’s price lists. The models include Core and Celeron, and range from dual core (five with Hyper-Threading) to a new quad-core i5:

Chart of new Intel models from CPU-World

“Intel today added 8 new Broadwell- and Skylake-based microprocessors to the official price list. New CPUs have unusual model numbers, like i5-6402P and i5-5200DU, which indicates that they may have different feature-set than the mainstream line of desktop and mobile CPUs. Intel also introduced today Celeron 3855U and 3955U ultra-low voltage models.”

It is unclear if the desktop models (Core i3-6098P, Core i5-6402P) listed with enter the retail channel, or if they are destined for OEM applications. The report points out these models have a P suffix “that was used to signify the lack of integrated GPU in older generations of Core i3/i5 products. There is a good chance that it still means just that”.